I caught Jackson mid-way through his breakfast - he looks a little surprised. Speaking of breakfast - I found that these croissants that are wrapped in plastic are a great thing to take on early morning flights. After a couple of hours on the dash they are nice and warm and just like out of the oven.

These Ospreys just beat us into the base so we had to set down and wait until all their passengers offloaded and they departed until we could move onto the main pads, offload our paxs and get refuel. The refuelers at this base are a little out of control with their paranoia about safety but that is a story for another time. It was fun watching the Ospreys depart - they don't look quite right but they work.

Another picture of Marines milling around the back of the aircraft waiting until their bags get loaded so they can load. A couple of months ago they would stand behind the engines to get warm but now they are all packed into the center trying to stay out of the way of the blast. The exhaust is around 1200F so you can imagine it isn't real pleasant on a hot summer day or even a warm spring day for that matter.

I thought this was an interesting picture. In the middle right at the top of the picture you can see a small black dot (if you click on the picture it will expand and you can see it better). This is actually a Chinook. Brian is coming down in an autorotation check. It is fun to watch from the ground because the aircraft pretty much drops straight out of the sky. We do this check after adjustments to the blades to make sure it can still descend in a controlled manner if both engines quit (controlled being relative). It is just about my least favorite thing we do as a test pilot. This picture was taken on the third day of a very extensive evaluation Brian completed a couple of weeks ago. A test pilot from the standardization division back at the home of Army aviation (Ft. Rucker , Alabama) came over here to test Brian and after passing with flying colors he is now the Army's newest CH-47 maintenance examiner (he is like me in that he now gives check rides to other maintenance pilots). So now anything I do to him on his check ride he can turn around and make me pay for it on my ride which I am going to have to take in a couple of weeks.

This is Tony as we were sitting in refuel. It was the first time I have flown with him in a long time. A very good guy to fly with except he always does all the work and makes me lazy :)

This is one side of a full load of Marines with all their bags. It has to be a pretty miserable flight but most of them are asleep withing 15 minutes.

This is looking out the side window at Al Asad. In the distance you can see all the large dirt covered mounds that were maintenance hangers for the Iraqi aircraft. We have converted some but most were destroyed so new buildings were built in between the old bunkers.

I am getting ready for our long day mission. It is a little hard to see but there is a hose coming out of the side of my jacket. It is part of a cooling vest that plugs into the aircraft system and pumps cooled fluid through tubes in the vest. Each pilot has a connection and there are three spots in the back for the crew members. All our aircraft were fitted with the system before we came over in '05 but like many good ideas it is almost never used. The crew members don't like it because they have to unhook to move around the aircraft. Since they don't use it they don't have a lot of incentive to keep it working. They are the ones who service the system, repair the hoses and such like so as a result very little works. This is the only aircraft in the fleet that has it working and that is because the FE (Rigdon) knows a lot about the system. It's too bad because it makes a huge difference on long day flights and really helps reduce fatigue.

25 Mar

I finished up nights with a couple of good flights with Eric, followed by my annual check ride. Eric is one of our more experienced PICs so we almost never fly together since we usually combine high and low time pilots to lower the risk (our last flight together was doing HUD training down in Kuwait). He is the same pilot I flew the acft up from Texas with and we fly a lot alike. It’s always relaxing and enjoyable to fly with another pilot like that. I have found that compatibility makes a huge difference on a mission. I can have a good flight with one pilot then do the exact same mission with another pilot and be exhausted at the end of the flight. My check ride went well but like every year I never do as well as I want to. I always end up messing up something that I haven’t had any problems with before. The very next day all our missions shifted to days for awhile. I took that day off then came in the next morning to fly a mission. It was a seven hour mission which made for a long day just coming off of nights. It was a good crew and the mission went smooth so that helped, plus I had a Monster to get me through. A lot of guys over here live on those high caffeine energy drinks – Monster, Redbull, RipIt, ect. I try to limit them but they sure do work. It was Easter Sunday but since we were flying we missed the big lunch spread with all the specialty dishes. It did remind me that last Easter I was sitting in the same chow hall (I was over here for the site survey) thinking that a year from then we would be over halfway through our deployment and here we are. The next day the first group of acft was up at AL Asad to pick up passengers when the trail acft (081) ran into some problems. They were taxing straight down a taxi way when they felt the aft right of the acft drop. J.R. picked it up to a hover and a crew member saw their landing gear lying on the ground. It must have cracked sometime previously and just chose that moment to give it up. They called the crash/rescue guys and within 15 minutes they had crates and mattresses stacked up so they could land the missing landing gear area on them. The other mission finished up, came back here, picked up the repair parts and flew back up. The repair was going to take awhile so they escorted the other acft home. This morning they went back up to Al Asad to do a mission out west but the weather was bad further west so they stayed to escort 081 home. As they were waiting they saw a wall of dust moving in and since 081 still had another hour of work they departed. The weather is supposed to be bad tomorrow so that short mission may turn into a three day stay. The pilot for that mission was slated for a MTP and J.R. decided to take it. Brian and I are so glad he did or else that would be one of us up there. By the way, the heat is back.

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This is looking towards the chow hall which is only a couple of hundred yards away.

This is a picture taken yesterday from up on top of my room looking towards the flight line. The wind wasn't blowing that hard this time but it was hard to breath after being outside for any length of time.

16 Mar

The big story this past week has been the dust storms. It cleared up for a day since the last time I wrote then the past four days have been pretty much solid dust. On the 11^th I had my first night mission since November and it was way too exciting. We were delayed for a couple of hours then they gave us legal weather and said it was going to be improving throughout the night, so we launched. As soon as we left the airfield on our way to our first stop it started raining on us. The visibility didn’t look as good as what they were calling for but it is so hard to tell when the air is full of dust and you have no star or moonlight. The only reference you have is lights on the ground and they get distorted as the light reflects off the dust. As soon as we passed the last ground lights it was like flying into a wall. The other pilot who was on the flight controls started to lose his references and began to climb (a nature reaction due to pilot’s general aversion to the ground) which made things worse. As he became more disorientated he started over controlling the aircraft to the point where I had to take the flight controls. At this point the other aircraft was beneath and behind us and I had no hope of getting back into formation so I turned away from them and climbed to get some separation. This took me completely away from any ground reference so I flipped up my goggles and focused on flying using the instruments. Needless to say I was a little out of practice and it took all my concentration to get the aircraft turned around and flying level. In 12 years of flying I have never been that disorientated. The official term is spatial disorientation but we call it being un-caged (when you have no idea the position of your body relative to the ground) and I was completely un-caged. Your brain is screaming at you to level the aircraft but the instruments are telling you the aircraft is level. It is a very uncomfortable feeling and it lasted all the way until we got back to the airfield and I could see the lights. There were a lot of lessons learned on that flight – ones I hope I don’t have to learn again. Two nights later the weather didn’t clear until midnight so we didn’t get back from our mission until 5AM. The last two nights have been really bad so the decision to cancel has been easy. It is finally clearing up today and it should be good for the next few days. I am only on nights for another week so hopefully I can get a few more flights in. I don’t feel comfortable maintaining my status as a unit trainer in goggles unless I am able to fly more. After this I may just stay days for the rest of the deployment, but we will see.

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10 Mar

I jumped right back into things – my first three days back I did three test flights. They were all fairly simple but it was nice to get back in the air. There have been a few small changes since I left but overall things have just moved along. I guess I missed some pretty good dust storms that lasted for days but to paraphrase a famous Office Space quote – I wouldn’t say I have been missing them. Speaking of dust storms – another one rolled in this morning. This time the wind is blowing out of the east and the dust is a lot finer – almost like talcum powder. With the wind behind it the dust forces itself through every crack and crevice, which our buildings have a lot of. There was some discussion about whether I would continue to rotate to nights every so often or just stay on days until we leave. I decided to at least go to nights on this cycle so I can get my annual check ride completed. I like the variety but it is less complicated for maintenance scheduling if I stay on days. So I have today off to reverse out - right after I got adjusted to the time zone change. It’s not going so well – I am lying awake writing this right in the middle of when I should be sleeping. It didn’t help that last night I fell asleep at 8:30 while watching a basketball game and woke up at 2:30. So the first few days might be a little rough. We received some great news right when I got back over here. The unit that is going to replace us is scheduled to be here in August so we should be home about 1 ½ months earlier than expected. It’s pretty exciting because September is a wonderful month in Alaska and Wendi and I were hoping to do another camping trip or two before we leave. It was a nice morale boost for everyone here and people are smiling a lot more than they were a few days ago.

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We visited a site called cathedral grove. An unlogged area that still has all the monster trees left. It was hit hard by a wind storm in 1997 which blew down the tree I am standing next to but as you can see there are still some big ones left.

Just enjoying the view.

This is another beach a little south of where we stayed. The rock behind Wendi is called incinerator rock. This is the site of an old military outpost from the early 1900s and they would bring their trash to this area and burn it - hence the name.

Another view of south beach - when the tide is high the waves come all the way up to where I am standing.

Wendi and I enjoying another beautiful day at the coast.

Looking south along the trail. This are was known as one of the grave yards of the Pacific with over 300 ships sunk in the surrounding waters. Between fog and the rocks there wasn't much room for error. You can see why any harbor area was highly prized.

A section of the coast trail that goes through the Pacific Rim Preserve. Cedar is one of my favorite trees and this area is full of them. They go through a dramatic size increase within a couple hundred yards of the coast but you can still see the effects of the wind twisting them.

This was an area called South Beach where the rocks funneled the water in resulting in some impressive waves. One of the reasons we chose this area in the winter was for a chance to see a storm roll in. There is nothing like a good winter storm on the west coast. It was not to be so we had to substitute beautiful weather for crashing waves but it was still fun to watch the tide come in here.

Wendi in the same area. That is one thing about me being slowed down - it allowed Wendi to walk with me or even ahead :)

The forest path that leads down to south beach. My photography skills don't do it justice but the sunlight through the trees was rather dramatic.

A view of the ocean from our balcony. The colors of the coast are amazing. It was a great walking beach and the best surfing area on the coast. There were people out there every day in wet suits - a little crazy.

I skipped ahead quite a bit and from these next pictures you can tell which part of the trip we really liked. This is the inside of our hotel room in Tofino. It is a little dark but you can see the view we had.

Looking up at some of the buildings in downtown Vancouver. Douglas Copland (who grew up here) wrote a book about the city called City of Glass. It is an accurate description. The hotel we stayed in was one of the few buildings not made of glass and one of the oldest - it was one of the grand old railroad hotels from the 20s.

This is looking over the bay to north Vancouver. The city is in a beautiful location and pretty much hemmed in by geography so it hasn't developed a lot of the sprawl that makes other cities its size so ugly.

A view of the city scape of Vancouver. There are a whole lot more residential buildings than office buildings. A lot of them developed for Asian customers in anticipation of the expected influx after the hand over of Hong Kong.

6 Mar

I knew there would be a break but I didn’t expect it to be this long. The days before I left were a little hectic – lots of running around and getting things in order. I didn’t plan on writing any during leave – I wanted a complete break but now that I am back I will give a rough outline. It didn’t start off too well -on the night before I left I came down with some bug that made for a pretty miserable time. I would have postponed my leave if we hadn’t already made all the reservations and bought the plane tickets. I made it down to Kuwait the night of the 7th and found out my flight wouldn’t be leaving until the night of the 9^th. There wasn’t a whole lot to do except lay on the bed and feel sorry for myself. One thing about flying military – it makes it a whole lot harder to complain about civilian flights. From the time they started processing us for our flight it was 9 ½ hours until we actually boarded the plane. The majority of that time was standing in formation or waiting in what was called the Freedom Room, which is a little ironic since we weren’t allowed to leave. Civilian security pales in comparison to what the Navy does during a customs inspection. Our bags were x-rayed after which all the contents were dumped out on the table and gone through by hand. After repacking they were sent through the x-ray machine again. We all walked through the metal detector then individually wanded. Keep in mind we were all military people going home on leave – I can’t think of a group of people less likely to want to cause problems on a flight. This was my eighth trip between Iraq and Alaska and like the other 7 times it was about 32 hours from when I stepped on the plane in Kuwait until I stepped off in Fairbanks. Needless to say the days in transit didn’t do my body any favors and I spent the first couple of days at home lying on the couch but it was still a whole lot better than being in Iraq. The only think I did around the house was fix two flat tires before we flew down to Seattle on the 13^th. We only stayed one night but it was nice to see Betsy, Ken, Heidi and their new baby Max. The next day we drove up to Vancouver BC and spent 4 nights in the city. I was a lot less mobile than what Wendi had anticipated but we were still able to see quite a bit. Vancouver was interesting in that it felt like a very young city and everything was new. It was the only city I have been in where I thought it was a better place to live in than to visit. From there we took the ferry over to Victoria and stayed two nights in the same bed and breakfast we stayed in the week before I joined the military in 94. Everything was just how we remembered it except the price had risen dramatically with the bad exchange rate. It was here that I hit the low point as far as not feeling well and we seriously thought about calling it quits and heading back. After much consideration I figured it could only get better so we continued on to Tofino which is on the west coast of Vancouver Island. We were both glad we did because I started feeling better and it was absolutely beautiful. It only rained one morning and the rest of the time the skies were clear with temps in the upper 50s to low 60s. The area felt a lot like the Oregon coast but even more rugged. We stayed there 4 nights then back to Victoria for a night then Seattle, then home. The trip was a lot of fun but we both agreed it was a little too long. We got tired of living in hotels and eating in restaurants. By the end we had a great urge to go camping somewhere – too much luxury. The last few days in Alaska were a little strange because while we didn’t want it to happen both of us were just kind of waiting for me to leave so we could get back into our routines. Living in limbo like that is emotionally exhausting. I left Alaska the morning of the 1^st, spent the night in Dallas and arrived in Kuwait the afternoon of the 3^rd. The next morning I got on a flight to TQ but it was in a dust storm so we landed in Balad, spent the day there and then flew back to Kuwait. Around midnight there was another flight for TQ but when I called the unit they said the visibility was still ¼ mile so since I had been up since 5 AM I pulled myself off the flight and went to bed. The morning of the 5^th everything cleared up and I made it up here a little after noon. The trip was well worth it but I am very happy to be done traveling for awhile.

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